


Toyota Shopping

by JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, discussion of unequal relationship, insecure!Bitty, mentions of Coach Bittle, mentions of Shitty Knight - Freeform, mentions of Suzanne Bittle, oblivious but also kind of not!Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 20:56:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12920079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle/pseuds/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle
Summary: When the picture of him and Jack at the Toyota dealership shows up online, Bitty knows it has the potential to be bad. What if Jack gets outed? What if people think Bitty is a gold digger? What if they think Jack is his sugar daddy? And why doesn't Jack think any of this is a problem?





	Toyota Shopping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monroesherlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monroesherlock/gifts).



> Monroesherlock asked for a Bitty-centric fic, and this pretty much all Bitty's stream of consciousness. They also for maybe something about him coming to terms with being a sugar baby and dealing with judgment from friends and the public. I don't really see Jack and Bitty as having a formal sugar daddy-sugar baby relationship, but I'm sure that it could look like that from the outside. This looks at Bitty's fear of that kind of judgment. I hope they like it!  
> Many thanks to betas [muggle95](http://http://archiveofourown.org/users/muggle95/pseuds/muggle95) and [Dira Sudis](http://http://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis), who talked me through what I was trying to say. Any remaining mistakes or shortcomings are my own.  
> I do not, however, own Check Please! or any of its characters. Bless Ngozi for creating them.

Bitty stared at his phone screen. He put the phone down and picked it back up. He set it back to the lock screen, and placed it face down on the table for good measure. He picked it up, unlocked it, and looked at it again.

The image hadn’t changed. It was still a picture -- poorly lit and grainy as it was -- of Jack and him, at the Toyota dealership. He was looking up at Jack in the picture, Jack looking down at him, the sales person a figure in the background.

They weren’t even touching, but there was something about the way they stood, bodies angled towards each other, that just looked like they were together. 

The picture wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the caption. “Who wouldn’t want Jack Zimmermann as a sugar daddy? Looks like the rewards are shiny and come with four wheels. My gf said he was def buying a car for the blond guy. Damn, Jack, if you’re out there, I’ll be your sugar baby any time.”

Ugh. What had made him search Jack’s tag anyway? It was just a dumb Tumblr post; no one would take it seriously. Even if did have 85 notes. That wasn’t too many. Really.

Just to make sure, Bitty switched to Twitter and searched Jack’s mentions there. Twitter was for the, ahem, more discerning social media user. That kind of nonsense wouldn’t find a home there.

Except it did. The picture was there, along with the tweet, “Vroom, vroom. Looks like @JZimmermann1’s boytoy is getting a TOY-ota of his own.”

Eighty likes, 25 retweets, and 10 replies. And it had been posted an hour ago.

Bitty put his phone down again on the kitchen table again. He took a deep breath and counted to 10 and tried to think of any positives. One, Mama and Coach would probably never see this. Coach didn’t really do social media, and Mama was on Facebook and Pinterest, and only watched Bitty’s vlogs when he specifically sent a link. Thank God she’d never learned Twitter; Bitty had needed it as an anonymous outlet to vent for so long. He wasn’t sure she’d even heard of Tumblr.

Two, Jack probably wouldn’t see it, at least not if no one showed it to him. He was almost as clueless as Coach, although his sort-of anonymous Instagram account, filled with artsy shots of Providence and more geese than one would expect, did fairly well.

No one on the team would show Jack, at least not before the game tonight. The Falconers were doing well this year, and nobody would want to jeopardize their leading scorer’s mood. The team was in the midst of a three-game swing through western Canada, and coming home with at least four points would move them up the table nicely.

But. Bob would see it. And if Bob saw it, so would Alicia. The Falcs’ social media team would see it. Who was he kidding? They already had.

Bitty thought about calling Celeste, asking what she thought he should do, but he was pretty sure he knew the answer: Nothing. Don’t feed the trolls. There’s no reason Jack shouldn’t be looking at cars, no reason he shouldn’t go with a friend who was looking at cars, nothing in the picture to indicate there was anything more to it. The problem was with the words that went with the pictures. Not just the characterization of their relationship, but the demeaning, sneering tone.

Well, if no one on the team would tell Jack, Bitty wouldn’t either. At least not until they were back together in Providence. For about the seventh time that day, Bitty wished he could just call Jack and hear his voice. But Jack was probably on the ice for morning skate right now, and after there would be lunch with teammates, and Bitty didn’t want to be clingy.

With Jack gone for a week, Bitty had come to Madison to spend Thanksgiving with his family. It was his first solo trip back for more than a weekend since he had come out to Mama and Coach last winter, and it was just a little … uncomfortable.

It wasn’t like his parents weren’t welcoming or didn’t act like they loved him. Any wild fears he’d had about being disowned for being gay had been totally unfounded. 

No, this was more subtle. It was Mama asking about work, obviously angling for news of a promotion. It was Coach commenting on Bitty getting direct flights in the middle of the day, instead of leaving at the crack of dawn and making two connections to save money. “Don’t want to have champagne taste on a beer budget, Junior,” Coach had said.

“Don’t worry about me, Coach,” Bitty said. “I can stand on my own two feet.”

The thing was, though, he wasn’t exactly supporting himself.

Bitty lived in Jack’s condo without paying rent or utilities. He bought groceries, yes, but so did Jack, and Jack usually paid when they went anywhere together. Bitty’s biggest expense was his monthly train pass. Otherwise, he bought his clothes and whatever he needed to run his vlog. No wonder he’d been able to buy a convenient plane ticket despite his very entry-level salary at a Boston lifestyle publishing house.

When he’d interviewed with Sarah and James, he’d been so thrilled that they’d offered him a job that he’d forgotten to even ask how much it paid. When they told him he’d start at $39,000 a year, with a small raise after six months, he’d smiled and thanked them.

The fact that he knew he’d be moving in with Jack might have had something to do with the way it took him another two days to consider what $39,000 would pay for if he was on his own.

He’d be able to make it, he reasoned. He’d probably have to live with a roommate or two in an out-of-the way neighborhood, and he wouldn’t have a state-of-the-art kitchen to cook in, and evenings out would mean meeting friends in cheap bars. He’d have to buy clothes from off-price retailers, and he wouldn’t be able to save much money, but he could make it. Barely. He thought.

So he hadn’t been lying when he told Coach he could stand on his own two feet.

He could have done without the lecture that followed.

“It’s important to live within your means, son,” Coach said. “A man is responsible for himself, doesn’t need handouts. You need a job that will support a family, son.”

Sometimes, purely as a thought exercise, Bitty would try to envision living on the salary he made. How soon would he move up the ranks? He was already being asked to come up with ways to help some of the products cross platforms, to offer websites that would let the readers (users) interact with one another, to post how-to videos to YouTube so someone who got an idea from a book could see how a project was done. He was due for his six-month raise next month, and he was hoping it was enough of a bump to be noticeable.

How soon would he be making enough to afford an apartment on his own, to be able to plan a vacation for him and Jack? But if he had to rely on himself for all his income, well, then Jack wouldn’t be there. Because whether Jack was playing or not, he would always have access to enough money to make the day-to-day decisions easier.

Jack might not always be there. They had made no promises of forever to each other, and Bitty wouldn’t have accepted any promise that Jack made just now. He believed Jack when he said he loved Bitty, that Bitty was the one for him. Or he believed that Jack believed it. But sometimes, when Jack had been gone for a week and there were a dozen pies in the freezer and Bitty should have known better than to go through his early vlog installments, the idea that Jack was as committed to him as Bitty was to Jack was just too much for Bitty to accept. Why would Jack want someone like him, someone who wasn’t gorgeous and glamorous or rich or even built, someone whose presence in Jack’s life, in Jack’s home, could cause Jack so many problems? 

The conversations Bitty had with Jack -- multiple times -- about his need to be self-sufficient didn’t help.

“But we are living within our means,” Jack had protested when Bitty brought it up after a phone call with his mother. “I mean, not to brag, but this place is kind of modest, given what I make and what some of the other guys have.”

“That’s what I mean,” Bitty said. “We’re living within _your_ means. My means would buy a bedroom and shared bath in a third-floor walk-up somewhere.”

“If it would make you happy, I suppose we could find a place like that,” Jack said. 

Bitty had nearly growled in exasperation.

“You know you can’t live in a place like that,” he said. “You need privacy and security, and a comfortable bed, and --”

“And you don’t need a comfortable bed?” Jack asked, his eyebrow raised.

“Hush, you,” Bitty said. “I don’t make millions of dollars with my body.”

He stopped, realizing how that sounded. Jack smirked.

“You know what I mean,” Bitty protested. “No, wait. Because that is what people will think of me. That you’re paying for me to live in the lap of luxury, because, well, because I sleep with you.”

Jack’s face fell.

“That’s not what you think, is it, _lapinou?”_ Jack said. “You don’t think you have to --”

“Jack, sweetheart, you don’t have to pay me to sleep with you,” Bitty said. “Heck, _I’d_ pay for the privilege if that wasn’t just gross. But, you know, the guys in the Haus would call you my sugar daddy when you got us all tickets, or when you replaced the dryer.”

Now Jack was positively glowering.

“First, I should call Shitty so he can call all of them and explain how much is wrong with that,” Jack said. “Second, those are things that benefitted them as much as you, so they really can’t talk.”

“I know,” Bitty said. “And they were just chirping. They didn’t really mean anything. It was fine. But what about the rest of the world, Jack? What about your family and your teammates? I don’t want them to think I’m some kind of gold-digger. What about my coworkers?”

“Bits, my parents love you,” Jack said. “I'm pretty sure they think I got the better end of the deal here. My teammates, too. Remember, they know me. I’m an awkward hockey robot, and I don’t deserve someone like you.”

That conversation had devolved into Bitty showing Jack how thoroughly he disagreed with that assessment, using his mouth in far more persuasive ways than forming words.

If Bitty just told the people at work that he was living in Providence with his boyfriend, and let them assume they were doing it to save money, because he never said his boyfriend was a face-of-the-franchise multi-million dollar professional athlete, well, that really was his own business, wasn't it?

Jack had never said anything about wanting to meet them, and when they told Bitty he should invite his boyfriend for drinks after work, Bitty always put them off by saying his boyfriend was really busy at his job, which was true enough. That way, if ever he was in the market for a roommate in Boston, his coworkers wouldn’t know who dumped him.

Whenever Bitty made any comments to Jack about not pulling his weight financially, Jack would point out that Bitty saved them money every week by cooking and cutting down on restaurant and take-out bills, and it really didn’t cost him anything for Bitty to live there anyway.

So Bitty made sure he cooked as often as he could, and made Jack’s game-day PB&J’s with his homemade whole-wheat bread and jam without fail. On more than one occasion -- the home opener, a game against the hated Bruins -- Bitty made sandwiches for everyone on the team, coaching staff included.

He also made sure there was pie for the nook at least once a week, and cookies or muffins or something similar at least as often.

When he’d come home from the market with so much butter it was straining the handles of his grocery bag, Jack had said, “If you were planning to buy so much, you should have taken the car. Why do you need that much anyway? There’s not a holiday coming up or anything, is there?”

“I wasn’t sure what time you had to leave for practice,” Bitty said. “And I wasn’t really planning to buy so much butter today, but there was a one-day sale, buy one get one free. There was a limit, but Mike let me go through the line a few times.”

Jack shook his head. “You bought--” he stopped to count as Bitty unloaded the groceries on the counter “-- 20 pounds of butter because it was on sale? How much could you even save on butter?”

“Butter’s expensive,” Bitty said. “And I don’t have the sin bin to help pay for it any more.”

He pulled the receipt from the bag. “It was buy one-get one, and I spent $40, so I also saved $40. Don’t worry about it spoiling,” he said brightly.

“I wasn’t,” Jack muttered.

“I go through a lot of butter,” Bitty said. “And even if I didn’t, it’ll keep for months in the freezer.”

“But you don’t need to worry about how much butter costs,” Jack said. “We have enough -- _You_ have enough money to buy butter.”

Bitty knew he did, because he didn’t pay for much else. But he’d had years to learn to take advantage of good deals when they presented themselves, and it was a hard habit to break. It was a habit Jack had never formed. After months of living with Jack, Bitty had come to understand a bit more about what never having to worry about money actually meant.

It didn’t mean Jack was extravagant; far from it. Left to his own devices, Jack would have furnished his condo with a comfortable bed and duvet, two sets of sheets, a functional couch, an adequate TV, and a set of four plates, cups and bowls.

It did mean that when Jack wanted something, whether it was a KitchenAid stand mixer for Bitty or a gaming console for when the SMH guys came over, he bought it with scarcely a glance at the price tag, confident that the money to pay for it would be there when the bill came due. He usually used the same credit card for everything -- one that accrued airline miles -- paid it off each month, and then gave the excess miles to a charity for sick kids at the end of the year.

That was just the way Jack was. Of course he didn’t see a problem loving a boy from Georgia who had to move a thousand miles from home to come out of the closet.

Bitty shook his head fondly as he cleared the screen on his phone one last time and got up to check on the pies he had in the oven. There would be dinner at MooMaw’s this afternoon, then he would have time to Skype Jack before his West Coast game.

He wouldn’t feed the trolls. It would be fine. And when he and Jack were home, he’d tell Jack again why he shouldn’t buy Bitty a car for Christmas, no matter how much easier it would be for Bitty to get back and forth from Boston without being tied to the train schedule.

*********************************************************

The first thing Jack did when he came home after the roadie was wrap his arms around Bitty, burying his nose in Bitty’s hair and just inhaling. Bitty went willingly into his arms, despite the mixer working on the same chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies he’d once slipped into Jack’s carry-on to take home at Christmas break. They were a sturdy cookie; they’d be fine if they were beaten a little too long.

Bitty loved when Jack embraced him like that; it felt like he was surrounded by Jack, who, despite just getting off a plane from Edmonton half an hour earlier, smelled good. The way Jack rested his head on Bitty didn’t make Bitty feel small or weak; it felt like he and Jack were supporting and sheltering each other. He loved it. 

“Missed you,” Jack said, after dropping a kiss on the top of his head and releasing him enough for Bitty to stop the mixer. “How was Georgia?”

Bitty shrugged. 

“Fine,” he said. “All kinds of family gossip. And the kids I went to high school with -- I swear there’s a preschool class worth of babies among them. It was good to be at MooMaw’s for the holiday. I missed that when I was in school.”

“You should have gone,” Jack said. “You didn’t have to stay at the Haus and make dinner for those of us who don’t celebrate the holiday every time.”

Bitty finished adding the chocolate chips and turned the mixer back on for a brief time, not enough to crush the chips but enough to distribute them fairly evenly.

“I couldn’t afford it,” he said. “Not to fly down and back for Thanksgiving and again for Christmas three weeks later.”

“You should have --”

Jack stopped there, but Bitty knew what he was going to say. He was half annoyed with Jack for starting the sentence, and half annoyed with himself for making Jack too sensitive to their financial disparity to finish it. Bitty knew if he’d asked Jack for the money to fly home, Jack would have given it to him, no questions asked. At least his last two years of school, when they were dating, and probably even his sophomore year, when they were friendly. And if there had been a real need, some kind of emergency, of course he would have asked. But just because the American holiday calendar put two major holidays only a month apart? Nope. That would be asking too much.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bitty said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It was nice, is all. Why don’t you get comfortable while I get these in the oven?”

Bitty had two mugs on the coffee table when Jack came out from the bedroom. He’d taken a shower and was dressed in an old Samwell T-shirt and track pants, and his eyes lit up when he saw the steam rising from his mug. Getting so excited over his favorite herbal tea. This boy.

“I, uh, wanted to talk to you about something,” Bitty said, once Jack had settled back in the couch but before he picked up his book. 

“Ok,” Jack said, and went still.

“No, sweetpea, don’t worry,” Bitty said. “It’s not that bad. It’s just, there were a couple of social media posts. From last Thursday. Someone took a picture of us when we were at the Toyota dealership last week.”

“Oh, yeah, someone mentioned something to me about that,” Jack said. “But they said it was just us standing there in front of a car. So what?”

Bitty simultaneously blessed and cursed the Falcs PR staff. Blessed, because they managed to tell Jack something happened without worrying him; cursed, because now Bitty was going to have explain why it was bad.

“It was the picture and the caption together,” Bitty said. “It said you were buying a car for me, and called you a sugar daddy on Tumblr. On Twitter, it called me your boytoy. Jack, we’re gonna have to be more careful.”

“Ok,” Jack said, and blinked slowly a couple of times.. “Did it seem like they knew who you were?”

“No, Jack, but that’s not the point,” Bitty said. “With stuff like that floating around, there’s going to be rumors -- about you, and about me, because they won’t have to do much digging to figure out who I am. You know there are still photos of both of us on the SMH website. But your reputation is more important here.”

“There’ve always been rumors about me,” Jack said. “I’m pretty good at shutting down questions, and then they give up.”

Bitty tried not to shake his head at his boyfriend, but it was a near thing.

“Maybe the local sports reporters do,” he said. “And the guys from ESPN and Sports Illustrated and the Hockey News. But that’s not gonna stop the people on Tumblr and Twitter, and let’s be real, they’re better at internet stalking than the mainstream media anyway. And if gets big enough there, then it’ll be on Reddit and Deadspin and Buzzfeed. And then the mainstream media will be onto it, and you’ll be the first out player in the NHL whether you want to be or not.”

“Bits, calm down,” Jack said. “No one can say anything about my sexuality because we were car shopping together. Maybe I just brought you for advice or company or something.”

“No, Jack, someone was close enough to understand that you were planning to buy a car for me,” Bitty said. 

“So maybe I’m just generous to my friends,” Jack said. 

“If people see us grocery shopping and getting coffee and leaving the arena together -- on top of car shopping -- they’re not going to wait for any PDA,” Bitty said. 

“Why would anyone take the time to do that, though?” Jack said. “Don’t they have their own lives?”

“You would think,” Bitty said. “But no.”

“Wait,” Jack said. “Is the problem that people would know I’m dating a guy, or that they would think you’re in it for the money?”

Bitty thought for a moment, because to him, it was one and the same. Maybe it would be different if he was rich and famous in his own right ( _like Kent Parson,_ he did not listen to his brain telling him). 

“If they get the idea that I’m -- that you’re --- that I’m in this for the money, it would look so much worse. Although it seems odd that anyone would think you’d have to pay --”

“Bitty, no one who knows you is going to think that of you.”

“Oh, come on, Jack, anyone looks at the two of us, and they’re going to wonder what you’re getting out of the deal,” Bitty said. “You’re rich, and famous, and gorgeous, and I’m me. The person who posted on Tumblr volunteered to take my place as your sugar baby. And that’s how everyone’s going to see it. What is there about me that makes me worth your time? It’s not like we’re equals here.”

“But you know it’s not like that, right, Bits?” Jack asked. “I mean, you can do so many things I can’t do, and you work so hard. You have ever since I met you. You’re brave and you’re kind and you make people happy and comfortable.”

“I try, Jack,” Bitty said. “I really try. I try to be brave, and I try to make things as easy for you as I can, but it’s hard sometimes, with having to spend so much time at work, and commuting, and all.”

He hated that his voice cracked. His job was to be strong for Jack, whether that meant getting up early to get a nutritionist-approved dinner in the slow cooker before he left for work, or staying up late to console Jack after a loss or celebrate a win, or even sending pies every week so everyone from the staff to the players liked having Jack (and Bitty) around.

“It shouldn’t be hard,” Jack said. “I mean, you don’t have to try. Not for me. I didn’t ask you to move in to make things harder for you. I asked you to move in because I love you, and I want to be around you. I like when you cook for me, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to. You don’t owe me anything. If you weren’t working at all that would be fine with me.”

“I know that’s how you feel, sweet pea, but I feel like I do owe you something,” Bitty said. “I’m living here rent-free, and going to hockey games and nice restaurants and flying to Montreal and to Cabo last year. I just want to feel that I’m contributing.”

“Bitty -- Eric -- it’s not all about money,” Jack said, sitting up straight and looking at Bitty with something like his face-off glare. “Stop acting like it is. What we have -- what I feel for you -- has less than nothing to do with money.”

Bitty very carefully maintained his posture, and tried to sound rational.

“I know that,” he said. “Really, I do. And I would love you even if you were a history teacher with thousands of dollars in student loans to pay. Or even if you were really poor. You have to believe that.”

“So why is it so hard to believe I feel the same way about you?” Jack said, voice almost a whisper.

And shit, Jack wasn’t angry, Bitty realized. Not really, anyway. He was hurt.

“Jack, sweetheart, what we are -- you and me -- that’s not about money,” Bitty said. “But paying for food and housing and health care and transportation, that _is_ about money. And the fact is, you have a lot more than I do. You always have, and maybe you don’t realize how much it matters because you’ve never had to worry about it.”

“Which is why it makes sense for me to pay for things,” Jack said. “Because it’s not a worry for me. You’re not taking advantage of me. I don’t think that’s really possible, because there’s nothing I wouldn’t give you willingly. But if you’re going to worry so much about what other people think -- not the people who know us, because they know better -- well, I can’t do much about that.”

“I know that,” Bitty said. “I’m not blaming you. I’m just trying to protect us.”

“From what, though?” Jack said. “From people finding out that we love each other?”

“From people finding out you’re not straight,” Bitty said. “From people thinking that I’m bought and paid for.”

“How about this?” Jack said. “We let them say what they want. We let time tell the tale. I’m not going to be in the closet forever, Bitty, probably not even my whole career, and if that means going first, so be it. I want to marry you one day, and marriage records are public, so. And you are my equal, my partner already, and if people watch us, they’ll figure that out.”

Bitty was still trying to get his brain to catch up when Jack stopped talking.

“You want to marry me one day?” he finally said.

“Of course,” Jack said. “I thought you knew that. We’ve been together for more than two years. I’m not just waiting for someone else to come along. But that wasn’t a proposal. Not yet. I want to do it right.”

“I guess I’ll have to be patient, then,” Bitty said with a grin. Because getting married -- well, that would be a very public commitment, and it was a relief to hear Jack talk about it. But then the matter at hand sprang back into Bitty’s head. “But you know that won’t solve everything. You’ll still be you, and I’ll still be me.”

“I’m still not seeing the problem,” Jack said. “Yes, you’re you and I’m me and we love each other. That’s the point, right? And if we’re married and what’s mine and what’s yours is ours, then it won’t be anyone’s business.”

“None of this is anyone’s business,” Bitty said. “And people will still wonder how I managed to catch you and set myself up for life.”

“Bits, you caught me years ago, if that’s they way you want to put it,” Jack said. “And I don’t know that I’m such a prize.”

“Jack, of course you are, and you know that’s not what I meant,” Bitty said.

“Is that what you think of Gabby and Carrie?” Jack said. “I mean, Gabby’s in school, and Carrie’s a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure most of the money in those families comes from Marty and Thirdy. Do you think less of them because they don’t earn the same money a professional athlete does?”

“I won’t be your _wife,_ Jack,” Bitty said, and didn’t realize until the words were out of his mouth how sharp they were. 

Jack was just looking at him, almost expressionless. 

Bitty pushed on, even though he felt like he was on slippery ground.

“I mean, I guess, not more than I already am, with the cooking and cleaning and all,” he said. He tried for a chuckle and failed. He looked down. “I just never expected to grow up and not be in charge of my own life.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Jack said. “How are you not in charge of your own life? You went to school, you got a job, you choose how to spend your money and your time, right? And how does somebody being a wife change that? Maman never took second place to Papa when I was growing up, and your mother --”

“My mother rules the kitchen,” Bitty said. “And maybe -- _maybe --_ the dining room, but not the den or the house as a whole. She might decide what we’re eating and when, but the major decisions, those are up to Coach. He listens to her, of course, and he tries to do what’s best for the family, but he’s always had the final word. Going to Monroe? That was for Coach’s job. Moving back to Madison, even though I had to quit skating? Coach. And I guess maybe I just thought I should be able to decide those things for myself when I grew up.”

“Because you’re not a woman?” Jack challenged. 

Bitty recoiled, and Jack’s face softened.

“Sorry, that was uncalled for,” Jack said. “It’s just, Maman always drilled into me that women are people, and any man who treated them as less than that … “

He trailed off, and Bitty spared a thought for how Alicia Zimmermann would have developed her spine of steel, as a young woman achieving fame and fortune with her face and body.

“Of course you can make your own decisions,” Jack said slowly. “But I have to make my own, too, at least as far as playing hockey. And there might be times when my decision to play hockey means I don’t get to decide things like what city I live in most of the year. Are you saying you can’t live with that?”

“No, Jack, no,” Bitty said. “Not at all. It’s my decision to be with you, and I know you. You’ve worked to play hockey your whole life, and I would never take that away from you, even if I could. I just want to feel like I’m important, too. God, that sounds selfish and pathetic.”

“You are important,” Jack said. “I want you to be happy, Bits, and you are so important to me.”

“I know,” Bitty said. He pushed Jack back towards the corner of the couch and turned to arrange himself with his back against Jack’s chest, drawing Jack’s arms around his middle and twining the fingers of their right hands together.

“I want to be with you,” Bitty said. “That makes me happy. And despite all this, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s much easier to live on a seven-figure salary.”

“I think we can agree on that,” Jack said. “But we have to also agree that the amount of money we make doesn’t determine our worth to each other, or who is in charge in our home or in our relationship.”

“How do your parents do it?” Bitty asked. “If neither one is in charge.”

“They talk about things,” Jack said. “They negotiate, they argue sometimes. Once or twice they’ve flipped a coin -- that’s how they ended up with the house they have now. Maman wanted one closer to the city.”

Bitty pulled their hands to his mouth to kiss Jack’s knuckles. “A coin flip, eh?” he said. “Maybe Coach could get behind that.”

“Well, talking first, _eh?”_ Jack said. “Please talk to me when you’re feeling like this. I mean it when I say you don’t owe me anything. Not pies and cookies, not interior decorating, certainly not …”

Bitty felt rather than saw the heat rise in Jack’s chest.

“Were you about to say I don’t owe you sex?” he said. “I mean, try and stop me from baking, or making the place I live into a home, but sex?”

“Yes?” Jack breathed into Bitty’s ear. 

“Please don’t try to stop me,” Bitty giggled, and started to squirm his way around to face Jack.

“One thing first,” Jack said. “Can we talk about the car thing? Because I would feel better knowing you had a car. And I’m tired of Tater and Marty telling me I’m cheap because you don’t have one.”

“So now who cares what people think?” Bitty chirped, settling into Jack’s lap. “But fine. If you insist. The Prius we looked at, in red, with heated seats.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you liked it. And please come say hi on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/justlookfrightened)!


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